How Much Is Leisure Worth? Direct Measurement with Contingent Valuation

This paper uses a contingent value survey in a Rocky Mountain city to measure the national income accounting value of leisure activities. Such direct measurement avoids shortcomings of the previously used labor value approach and individually values various types of leisure, e.g., napping and socializing. The results of the study indicate promise for this measurement approach but also raise some issues that require further research. Included are suggestions for overcoming problems discovered with this method and for future research.The authors wish to thank two anonymous referees of this journal who provided insightful comments and suggestions which improved the paper significantly.     

The Economic Impact of Space Weather: Where Do We Stand?

Space weather describes the way in which the Sun, and conditions in space more generally, impact human activity and technology both in space and on the ground. It is now well understood that space weather represents a significant threat to infrastructure resilience, and is a source of risk that is wide‐ranging in its impact and the pathways by which this impact may occur. Although space weather is growing rapidly as a field, work rigorously assessing the overall economic cost of space weather appears to be in its infancy. Here, we provide an initial literature review to gather and assess the quality of any published assessments of space weather impacts and socioeconomic studies. Generally speaking, there is a good volume of scientific peer‐reviewed literature detailing the likelihood and statistics of different types of space weather phenomena. These phenomena all typically exhibit “power‐law” behavior in their severity. The literature on documented impacts is not as extensive, with many case studies, but few statistical studies. The literature on the economic impacts of space weather is rather sparse and not as well developed when compared to the other sections, most probably due to the somewhat limited data that are available from end‐users. The major risk is attached to power distribution systems and there is disagreement as to the severity of the technological footprint. This strongly controls the economic impact. Consequently, urgent work is required to better quantify the risk of future space weather events.     

Organizational Structures as Recursively Constructed Systems of Agency and Constraint: Compliance and Resistance in the Context of Structural Conditions*

Percevoir les structures organisationnelles et les comportements individuels réciproquement liés suggère que la conformité et la résistance sont omniprésentes dans la vie organisationnelle, tant comme réponses aux contraintes de la structure que comme stimuli redéfinissant les pratiques organisationnelles existantes. Une typologie des comportements individuels en relation avec les conditions structurales est formulée en juxtaposant la mesure avec laquelle les comportements acceptent ou défient les structures organisationnelles et les conséquences organisationnelles prévues. Il en résulte quatre catégories comportementales qui illustrent les tensions entre liberte d'action et contrainte, indiquant les implications organisationnelles pour chacune. Compliance and resistance are omnipresent in organizational life, both as behavioural responses to the constraining elements of structure, and as the stimulus for redefining existing organizational practices. This suggests that organizational structures and individual behaviours are reciprocally related. A typology of individual behaviours in relation to structural conditions is formulated by juxtaposing the extent to which behaviours accept or challenge existing organizational structures, and the intended organizational consequences of behaviour. The result is four behavioural categories that illustrate the tensions between agency and constraint, indicating the organizational outcomes associated with each.     

Direct Valuation of Personal Care by Households

This paper valued the quantity of child, sick, and elderly care provided by households using a new, direct measure. Such measures add to the literature that estimates the size of the contribution of non-market work by household members, particularly women, and to literature about valuation of childcare. This production remains unvalued in standard national income accounts. Traditional attempts to quantify this care multiplied care-giver hours by a wage rate, a method that suffers from several drawbacks, including omitting the contributions of anything but labor, the inability to handle joint production, and the use of an arbitrary wage rate. This study avoided these problems by valuing the amount of care with its market price based on data from a small urban area. The mean value was $3,547 annually (97 percent of it childcare) for all sample households and $9,610 for those providing care. The results afforded evidence of scale economies in parental childcare and quantified care furnished by different kinds of providers.     

Intermediaries supporting sports-based youth development programs

The authors describe intermediary organizations whose aim is to provide technical assistance to sports organizations about infusing a youth development emphasis into their programming. Team-Up for Youth, Sports PLUS Global, and the National Recreation and Park Association are the three organizations highlighted in this article. Team-Up for Youth's mission is to pioneer innovative strategies to support the healthy development of youth by strengthening and expanding afterschool sports and physical activity programs. Team-Up works with youth sports providers, policymakers and public officials, and staff and students at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It concentrates on five areas: training and education, coaching corps, grant making, public policy, and knowledge creating and sharing. Sports PLUS Global is an international organization that delivers educational training to communities using sports to promote human development, social change, and human rights. It uses the Positive Learning Using Sports (PLUS) method to reach children, coaches, and educators in camps and afterschool programs. The PLUS method employs twelve steps that are described in detail in the article. The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) engages national partners and local park and recreation agencies to improve the quality of youth sports nationwide. NRPA, in partnership with Sports Illustrated magazine, developed and manages the Sports Illustrated GOOD SPORTS initiative. Communities are improving youth sports through the following elements: teaching life skills, empowering success among youth, promoting physical activity and healthy lifestyles, and strengthening communities.     

Temporal variations in the relationship between infant mortality and economic status

Data from a metropolitan aggregate comprising three Ohio cities for the years 1959–61, 1969–71 and 1979–81 reveal some noteworthy variations over time in the nature and magnitude of the traditional inverse association between economic status and infant mortality. This brief paper describes these variations and offers an explanation for the observed temporal changes that relates the influence of medical and infant health care advances to the prevailing overall economic situation.

     

Are Religious Factors Associated with Political Consumerism?An Exploratory Study

A national survey with 876 responses examined whether political consumerism is related to religious factors including beliefs about gay marriage, if the Bible is the literal word of God, religiosity or social capital, altruism or civic engagement, cognitive engagement, and the use of political social and digital media. Results suggest religious factors may be important in political consumption, with political consumers less likely to believe the Bible is the literal word of God, suggesting they perceive self-direction regarding their religious beliefs. Political consumers may exhibit universalism by participating in altruistic activities such as volunteering to help the poor, homeless and elderly. However, given their lack of support for gay marriage, traditional religious teachings may supersede universalism for certain social justice issues.     

Trends in the Relationship between Infant Mortality and Socioeconomic Status

Abstract

This paper reports some of the results of an ecological analysis of the relationship between infant mortality and economic status in metropolitan Ohio at three points in time (1959–1961, 1969–1971 and 1979–1981). The data presented clearly reveal the adverse mortality consequences of alow economic status. In spite of some remarkable declines in the infant death rate since 1960, most notably in neonatal mortality, the inverse socioeconomic differential in 1980 is as wide as it ever was, and it characterizes both whites and nonwhites and both the neonatal and postneonatal components of infant mortality. Moreover, in sharp contrast to the situation a generation ago, the neonatal death rate has emerged as a major contributor to the overall relationship between socioeconomic status and infant mortality. It is suggested that this situation reflects the failure of recent advances in maternal and infant care programs to reach those lower status members of the society that are most in need of them.